


Colors

by RoseAndPsyche



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 19:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2633075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseAndPsyche/pseuds/RoseAndPsyche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else – by color.<br/>~ Paul Cezanne</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colors

Colors are relative.

In school we learned that they are only light waves bouncing off various objects and received by the eyes… yet they seem to have a strange effect on us all.

In my mind, the sun is gold and by its light we see everything. When the sun is shining, all is touched with gold. Gold is the color of daffodils and crowns, the sky behind the winter trees, and Aslan's mane.

Susan's favorite color is white; she says its purple, but she always goes to white when she thinks we're not watching. White is gentle like the down on a swan's breast, abstract as the clouds and cold as the snow. It is purity and grace and the bandages she uses when we are hurt.

But white cannot be fully understood without black. Black once held fear for me, when at night, I would lie awake and old, horrid memories would come flooding back. But gold was there, gold would came and wash away the black like blood on stone. Then I would sink into white and I could finally sleep in peace.

I once thought black was terrible, but who can see the stars without the night? Black is the shadow behind every tree, the unseen depth of the waves, the beauty in the etching of the grass. We do not immediately realize it, but it is there. The colors would be dull indeed without black.

Lucy is a girl; she can never decide between green and blue, but in the end, she always settles for pink and laughs at me when I grumble. Pink is in the undersides of the clouds in the evening, touches the face of every joyful person and lies under the curving white bark of the birch tree. It is alive.

Peter likes red; which seems almost strange for a man who has seen death as he has. It is the color that stains the armor of the warriors that die in his arms after the battle is over, the color of the ruby set in the hilt of his sword, the flash of the roses in the garden. I've never seen anything more terrible than Peter in battle, but his hands are as gentle as Susan's. With him, red is both fierce and calm, like the sky as the sun is setting.

Colors are relative. They paint the world with rainbows and ripple in the east at sunrise; they are all around us, combined in vivid harmony. Just as green is the stem of the rose; the tranquil smooth-cut lawn and the bright vest of a jester; blue is in the humble faces of forget-me-nots, the sea and the ever changing sky.

I could never choose a color, because they all must be. One cannot live without another; they are all equally important.

I love them all.

**Author's Note:**

> Last year, while skiing with friends, I was at the top of the Mountain. I could see for miles in the cold, crystal air around us, the mountains in the range seemed like the blue, misty waves of a sea, rolling on and on forever until the horizon. The Lake was frozen, locked in a prison of white ice; it stretched out below us, prostrate on the earth.
> 
> That was when we saw the rainbow. It had been snowing hard for most of the morning, but then, suddenly, just as we came over the crest of the trail, the sun sliced through the clouds and touched the Lake, greeting it with a massive rainbow, nearly as wide as the Lake. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen... and it was gone before I could pull my camera out.
> 
> ~Psyche


End file.
